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jbhifi.com.auNOVEMBER
2016
EXTRAS
visit
stack.net.auspeak broken English and had absolutely
no marquee clout within the US. UA said,
“No way”. A seemingly besotted Cimino
then threatened the executive:
“It’s either her or I take my
film elsewhere”. He got his
leading lady.
Cimino’s post-Oscar
arrogance and apparent
contempt for UA’s
inexperienced executive
continued apace on location
in Montana. A whole town
had been constructed on the
plains but after filming for
four days, Cimino decided
that he did not like the
position of the buildings
against the skyline. It
was dismantled and
then completely rebuilt
just a few hundred feet
further south. A log cabin
was rigged up by the
special effects team with
24,000 bullet hits, which had taken two
days to complete. Cimino demanded the
effects be fired off so he could see what
it looked like before filming the scene. His
obsession for achieving absolute perfection
resulted in multiple takes – up
to 50 takes for various scenes
was not uncommon throughout
the shoot.
Consequently, one week into
production, Cimino was five days
behind schedule and had spent
$900,000 for a minute and a
half of usable film. Two weeks
in, he was 10 days and 15 pages
behind. By then he had exposed
and developed over two hours of
film, less than three minutes of
which he was willing to approve;
all at a rough cost of $1 million
per usable minute of
film. Alarm bells went
off at United Artists.
The problem
for UA was the
disastrous contract they
had eagerly and hastily
waved through, which
stated that the director
would not be penalised
for any cost overruns
incurred in completing
and delivering the film for
its Christmas 1979 release
date. Therefore, Cimino
was protected from any breach-of-contract
lawsuits.
Sacking and replacing a recent five
haul Academy Award winning director would
be PR suicide for the new UA executive.
Hence they were basically left with two
options: close down the production and
swallow the then $12 million cost, or run
with the movie the way Cimino wanted to
make it and hope it turned out to be the
cinematic masterpiece he kept professing
it would be. They reluctantly chose the
latter.
By now the media had got hold of the
extravagance, waste and mismanagement
that was rampant on the
Heaven’s
Gate
set. Headlines of “Hell’s Gate in
Montana” now regularly appeared on US
TV news channels and in Hollywood’s
trade papers.
Finally, almost an entire year after
he was originally scheduled to, Cimino
presented the first screening of
Heaven’s
Gate
to the UA executive. The film’s
running time was five hours and 25
minutes long. David Bach, UA’s Vice
President in Charge of Production,
memorably described it as “unendingly
beautiful and totally unwatchable.” Cimino
was forced to cut the film to a more
manageable three hours and 34 minutes,
and it was this version that premiered in
New York on November 18, 1980.
Virtually no one attended the aftershow
party; a portent of the next day's reviews,
which were devastating.
The New York
Times
film critic, Vincent Canby, wrote,
“
Heaven’s Gate
fails so completely, you
might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to
the Devil to obtain the success of
The Deer
Hunter
, and the Devil has now come around
to collect”. The LA premiere was immediately
cancelled and the picture was cut by a further
70 minutes and re-released. Only a few
curious movie diehards went to see it.
When all the finances were finally
calculated, Cimino’s movie had cost a
staggering $44 million ($135 million in today's
money) but only grossed $1.3 million in the
800 theatres it was shown in.
UA was now a busted flush and all of its
executive heads rolled. The parent company,
Transamerica, swiftly acted and sold the name
UA to MGM which became MGM/UA. United
Artists as an independent film company was
no more, and now became
the symbol of a discredited,
director-centric system.
Michael
Cimino, however, remained
unrepentant, firmly believing
that his film was a misjudged
masterpiece. But the
unmitigated failure of
Heaven’s
Gate
stuck to him for the
rest of his career. He would
direct a further four forgettable
motion pictures, and not
one of them recovered
their production costs.
...one week into
production, Cimino
was five days behind
schedule and had spent
$900,000 for a minute and
a half of usable film
Christopher Walken in a
scene from
Heaven's Gate
Cimino and his producer, Joann Carelli (standing on the step
ladder), set up a scene for shooting on location in Montana
continued